• Written, produced and directed by Larry Cohen
• Starring
  • Michael Moriarty
  • Candy Clark
  • David Carradine
  • Richard Roundtree

Some films spring from a small germ of an idea, a single image. Writer/director Larry Cohen, according to interviews, once looked at the Chrysler Building and said, “That’d be the coolest place to have a nest.”

And Q was born.

Mysterious deaths are plaguing New York, all associated with altitude. A window wiper mysteriously loses his head. A sunbather being spied on with a telescope disappears as blood spatters the far-below pedestrians. Detectives Shepard and Powell (David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) are on the case, and Shepard has a weird idea: could this case be connected to the flayed-alive corpse found in a hotel room — a corpse that shows signs of having been a willing sacrifice to Quetzlcoatl, the plumed serpent of Aztec mythology?

And while the cops stand around, waiting for the case to fall together for them, we meet the real main character (you can’t call him the hero) of the movie: Small-time slow-witted criminal Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty), a former addict who’s now trying to get danger-free jobs in the underworld. He was only supposed to drive the getaway car for a diamond heist, but when he’s thrust into the action he turns out to be the only one to get away — on foot, with a satchel of diamonds he quickly loses. Panicked, he tries his attorney’s office in the Chrysler Tower — and when the security guard chases him, he ascends into the highest parts of the tower.

Where he finds a nest. And an egg. And a fleshless skeleton.

So when, at his girlfriend’s apartment, Quinn is tracked down and beaten by the other robbers, he takes them to the Chrysler Tower, where he says he’s hidden the stash. And whatever lives in that nest eats them, to Jimmy’s delight.

It’s only when Detective Powell pulls him in to talk about the robbery that he overhears the flutter (ahem) the cops are in about the rumored bird-killings that he realizes the information he’s sitting on. It could finally make him something. He could finally get paid back for the life he blames on the cops. He could be important, the savior of the city, the man who leads them to the mysterious flying serpent.

And all it takes in one million dollars cash and a lifetime of criminal immunity.

Moriarty’s performance is the real show-stealer here; he’s a beautiful method actor, flawlessly portraying a smalltime white criminal-by-default who realizes that he’s not bright, but doesn’t seem to grasp exactly how not-bright he is. He’s a believably sympathetic but not terribly likeable fellow, and he’s an odd focus for a monster movie.

David Carradine also has a chance to play against type — he doesn’t do any of that Zen-style “staring into space,” and he plays an unusually easy-going cop. (When was the last time you saw a lead cop character whose middle name wasn’t “Belligerence”?)

These great performances almost distract you — almost — from the truly ludicrous premise. There’s a saurian creature the size of a B-52 bomber flying around the city, and all they have are isolated hysterical rumors? No one’s gotten a picture? I know native New Yorkers never look up, but I find it hard to believe that a scraper-gazing tourist didn’t snap a picture of our waylaid Aztec deity?

Also annoying is the way in which that whole Aztec angle gets shunted to the side. In exploring the mythology, Shepard runs across lots of curators and professors willing to pontificate on religion (a running theme with Larry Cohen; see the Notable Quotables below), but by the end we still don’t know: is this really a god, in the sense of a supernatural being? (Probably not, given that conventional armaments seem to do considerable damage.) Was it really “prayed into existence” by the lone Aztec priest sacrificing his followers? Or is it just some living fossil that somehow found its way to the Big Apple? It seems the explanations don’t matter to Larry Cohen, which is fine, it’s a free country, but it matters to me, dammit!

Nevertheless, it comes across as a terrific independent movie, also largely because it doesn’t have that “small” feel so common to independents. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that this was shot in full 35mm (no chintzy 16mm here), which bespeaks a confidence in being seen on enough screens to recoup the investment; the score is full and orchestral; and the actors are actual actors, actually playing their roles as if they were actual people. Imagine.

There were a couple of fairly obvious chops in the film, especially involving Shepard’s personal life (the video I watched was the old MCA 92-minute version; more recent releases and DVD’s could have longer running times), but it’s still a remarkably cohesive film if you can bring yourself to ignore that “No one notices the big-ass flying serpent” conceit.

Some Notable Quotables:

“Luckily all we have to do these days is take the wafer and drink the wine. That’s what I call being civilized.”

“What else is God but an invisible force that we fear?”

- It doesn’t matter what characters said either of the above, because it’s pretty clearly Larry Cohen speaking.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 16
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Shelly Desai (”Kahea”) was “V’Sal” in the 4th season TNG “Data’s Day”